Delta Air Lines sends message to United and American: We have A-350 and YOU don't!

Delta Air Lines Chief Operating Officer Gil West could not have been any clearer on Tuesday.

As Delta proudly welcomed the Airbus 350-900 into its fleet with an inaugural 2 1/2-hour Flight 8260 from Atlanta (Delta's hometown) to nowhere, West proclaimed to a congregation of media from around the world that the A-350 is now Delta's flagship plane.

That's right, folks. Delta's flagship.

West, in so doing, was essentially thumbing his nose at Chicago-based Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), which manufactures the highly-touted Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the plane that is the Airbus-350's most direct competition.

In Delta's cabin configuration, the A-350 accommodates just over 300 people in three cabins — Delta One Suite (a reimagined premium international business class product), Delta Premium Select (a hugely upgraded economy product), and the main cabin (economy to all those seated there).

Delta (NYSE: DAL) is making a big deal about the 350 because it is the first United States-based carrier to fly the plane — a point that COO West and other Delta executives made numerous times on Tuesday.

Indeed, Delta's repeated references to being the first U.S. carrier to fly the A-350 also were a direct thumbing of the nose at Chicago-based United Airlines (NYSE: UAL) and Dallas-based American Airlines (NASDAQ: AAL) — the two major legacy U.S. carriers with which Delta most directly competes.

While Delta only flies from Chicago's Midway and O'Hare airports to its hub cities, United and American both have major hubs at O'Hare.

But the A-350 won't be rolling into O'Hare anytime soon in American or United livery. That's for sure.

United and American both have orders for the A-350. But they aren't getting them anywhere near so quickly as Delta did.

United was supposed to start taking delivery of some 45 A-350s in 2018. But a United spokesman this morning confirmed the A-350 won't start entering United's fleet until 2020, nearly three years from now.

United pushed back the A-350 deliveries to focus on the new long-range Boeing 777-300ERs that the airline started putting on routes to Asia and the Middle East earlier this year.

American is currently scheduled to take delivery of the first of 20 A-350s in 2020, too. But in recent months it has added a number of Dreamliners to its fleet. AA now flies Dreamliners exclusively on all its nonstop flights between O'Hare Airport and London, England's Heathrow Airport.

So why did Delta decide to go big with the A-350 instead of the Dreamliner? West finessed the answer to that question yesterday.

But other sources at Delta said the decision was based — at least in part — on the fact that the A-350 doesn't use the lithium-ion batteries that were an early problem on the Dreamliner because they caught fire. Boeing engineers, however, appear to have resolved the problem though the Dreamliner still uses that type of battery.

But the battery issue on the Dreamliner is now of no concern to Delta. It's full steam ahead with the A-350, which will begin flying scheduled flights from Delta's hub at Detroit Metropolitan Airport to Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan on Oct.30, with nonstop service from Detroit to Seoul, South Korea beginning in November.

Delta now has two A-350s in hand. It will have seven by the end of 2017.